Chemical & Engineering News,
March 27, 1995

Stu Borman,

C&EN Washington

The presentation of
magazines, books,
and journals in digital formats is accelerating
as an alternative to conventional print-on-paper media. More and more publishers are embracing the
electronic publication
concept - often from a
fear of being left behind in the technological dust more than
from a desire to meet
market demand, which
for the most part remains nonexistent.

Most scientists continue for now to rely
on tried-and-true print
media. However, in
the future, electronic
publishing could have
a major impact on the
way scientists acquire and disseminate
information.

Today, an increasing number of on-line scientific journals and magazines
are being introduced, often on an experimental basis. And a growing number of sophisticated electronic library
systems, each containing a wide range
of text- and graphics-based information
resources, are being developed.

But as publishers get swept up in
this wave of new technology, they are
simultaneously troubled about how to
replace diminishing revenues from
traditional print publications and protect intellectual property when it is
available in an easily copied electronic form.

Established publishers are also facing a growing challenge from scientists
who have discovered that scientific information can be disseminated fairly
easily and economically using electronic print (e-print) archives. In some
fields, particularly physics, the e-print
concept has proven to be compelling in
its simplicity and immediacy, and
growth in use of such systems has been
exponential.

It remains to be seen whether conventional scientific publishers will
adopt the e-print idea - or possibly get
steam-rollered by this new form of
grassroots publishing. Publishers face
further challenges from document delivery services, which undercut the
need to subscribe to journals.

A major advantage of electronic publishing over conventional printing is
elimination of the costs of printing, paper, and mailing entailed in the production and distribution of print journals. In addition, electronic publishing makes it "easier to search through
masses of documents to find what
you want," says John Hearty, director
of reference services marketing for
OCLC, the Online Computer Library
Center. The center, based in Dublin,
Ohio, is a nonprofit organization that
works with publishers to develop
electronic journals.

"It's possible to get regular updates
on topics you're interested in," says
Hearty. "You can develop
your own journal on demand across all the publications a library subscribes to.
Information is delivered directly to your workstation,
so there's a convenience factor. And data can be pulled
out and manipulated in
spreadsheets." Such advanced capabilities are not
yet available with
many existing electronic publications, but
they could become realities in the future.

On-line scientific
publications

In the chemical sciences and related fields,
the American Chemical Society, headquartered in Washington,
D.C., is taking a leading role in electronic
information delivery.
ACS Director of Publications Robert H.
Marks believes that demand for the society's electronic publications will increase
over the next few years as demand for
traditional print products declines.

All 23 ACS research journals are currently available as the CJACS Plus file
on the STN International on-line system. Users can view scanned page images from issues of the journals going
back to 1992, including all graphics and
tables. The full text of articles (without
graphics and tables) is also searchable
from 1982 to date for all journals. Page
images can be downloaded to a user's
computer and then printed out.

For the first time this year, ACS journals will not have to be laboriously
scanned page by page into the system.
Instead, they will be created in fully
digitized form and published directly
in an electronic format.

Page images of ACS journal articles
from 1992 forward are also now accessible with
SciFinder, a graphical user
interface that facilitates nonexpert
searching of databases created by ACS
and by the Chemical Abstracts Service
(CAS), a division of ACS located in
Columbus, Ohio. SciFinder does not
yet provide for searching and browsing of the full-text contents of individual articles, but it may be upgraded to
do so.

ACS also is investigating the feasibility of making annual subscriptions to
ACS journals and magazines available
through the SciFinder arrangement.
SciFinder-based subscriptions would
provide a fixed-price alternative to
CJACS Plus, users of which are charged
fees based on connect time, the number
of answers displayed, and other factors.

CD-ROM (compact disc read-only
memory) versions of the Journal of the
American Chemical Society and Biochemistry are also now available, and ACS
hopes to add more journals to this series, called
ACS Publications on Disc.

CD-ROM-based chemistry journals
are also available from other publishers. Current CD-ROM offerings in
chemistry include the European Journal
of Biochemistry (published
by Springer-Verlag, Berlin)
and the Journal of Biological
Chemistry (published by the
American Society for Biochemistry & Molecular Biology, Bethesda, Md.).

"So far the response to
our CD-ROMs from ACS
members has been very
good - much better than
anticipated," says Marks.
"But we're a little disappointed with the library response." Hundreds of individual subscriptions have been sold,
but only a handful of the more expensive library subscriptions, he says.

"Librarians, and maybe even publishers, don't quite know what to make of
journal CD-ROM products," comments
Gary Wiggins, head of the chemistry library at Indiana University, Bloomington.

Electronic scientific journals from
several publishers are being distributed
by OCLC, including the Online Journal
of Current Clinical Trials, launched by
the American Association for the Advancement of Science, which is headquartered in Washington, D.C. The
journal generated insufficient contributor and subscriber interest, in part because there was no regular print version, prompting its sale to the current
publisher, Chapman & Hall, London.

OCLC also distributes on-line versions of Applied Physics Letters (published by the American Institute of
Physics, College Park, Md.), Electronic
Letters (published by the Institution of
Electrical Engineers, London), and Immunology Today (published by Elsevier
Science, New York City). OCLC has
plans to make available later this year
on-line versions of 30 journals from the
Current Opinion series (published by
Current Science, Philadelphia), Physical
Review Letters (published by the American Physical Society, College Park,
Md.), and publications in Elsevier's
Trends series. Print versions of these
publications will continue to exist, with
on-line presentation viewed as an alternative delivery mechanism.

People view and search OCLC-distributed on-line journals with Guidon,
an interface that runs under Windows or
in conjunction with the World Wide
Web access program, Mosaic. A Macintosh version of Guidon will be introduced later this year. Guidon supports
full-text searching by subject, title, author, keyword, and date, and searches
can be structured with a range of Boolean and proximity operators.

Guidon can handle page images that
have been digitized by electronic scanning
of published pages. However, it
also handles digital documents encoded with Standard Generalized Markup
Language (SGML). A standardized
code for identifying different elements
in an electronic document, SGML has
become the preferred format for electronic publishing.

From a user's viewpoint, a key advantage of electronic publishing "is going to be getting all your information
on a single workstation," says Hearty.
One of OCLC's goals for the near future is to integrate different types of information - primary literature (journals), secondary services (bibliographic
and abstracting data), and tertiary information (such as directories and encyclopedias) - so a user can skip back
and forth between them, all under a
graphical user interface.

This type of capability is already
available in part to STN users, who
can, for example, use SciFinder to
search for secondary information (such
as abstracts) on the CA Registry File
and then view a paper corresponding
to a specific abstract on the CJACS
Plus file.

Future information integration functions of OCLC on-line services will also
include "advertising capabilities - hot
links to ads," says Hearty. "If you
found a piece of equipment mentioned
in an experimental procedure, you
could push a button to access documentation, specifications, or advertising on that equipment. You could also
request further information from the
publisher or advertiser. But the advertising would be unobtrusive - if you
didn't want to look at it you wouldn't
have to." Advertising links are currently available in the on-line version of Immunology Today.

Electronic libraries

The electronic publishing concept is
also being studied at American Telephone & Telegraph Corp. AT&T's Bell
Laboratories unit in Murray Hill, N.J.,
has developed RightPages, an electronic library interface program that
is currently undergoing three major
trials.

RightPages user interface makes it possible to
select and view
journal pages. A page from Biochemistry is shown.

The first of these is at Bell Labs, where
350 users at 25 sites can use RightPages
to access more than 120 titles from 41
publishers, primarily in the computer
science, electrical engineering, and business fields. A second experiment, called
Red Sage, allows 330 users at the University of California, San Francisco,
and other local sites to see on-line versions of 70 publications from 19 publishers, covering radiology, molecular
biology, and other topics. And 135 users at several Bristol-Myers Squibb sites
can view 13 titles from eight publishers
on molecular biology, biochemistry,
and other topics.

According to RightPages manager
Melia Hoffman of AT&T, the RightPages system "has been using scanned
page images for the bulk of its input."
This is time-consuming because published journals must be laboriously entered into the system page by page, using scanning equipment that digitizes
the page images.

Another electronic library project is
TULIP (the University Licensing Program), a cooperative effort by Elsevier
and university libraries to study the
feasibility of networked distribution of
scientific journals.

TULIP is a database of scanned images of 43 Elsevier and Pergamon Press
(Tarrytown, N.Y.) journals in materials
science and engineering. Scientists at 17
participating universities, including nine
University of California campuses, can
access these journals over local area networks and make printouts.

TULIP implementations differ at the
various sites. In some cases, system interfaces are search-oriented, permitting
users to search for authors, titles, keywords, index terms, and (in some cases)
to search the full text of articles. In other
cases, the interfaces enable users to
browse publications - by choosing a
journal title from a list, selecting a specific issue, viewing the table of contents,
and selecting a specific article.

A further variation is that some users
are able to see screen displays of page
images, whereas others must print out
articles in order to view them. A major
goal of the TULIP experiment is to determine
which of these format variations work best for users.

Formally speaking, the TULIP experiment is going to conclude at the end of
this year. However, Elsevier plans to
continue its electronic publishing efforts. According to TULIP project manager Jaco Zijlstra of Elsevier, the company intends to provide scanned page
images of over 1,000 Elsevier journals
to a selected group of customers on an
experimental basis. In the long term,
Elsevier will move toward providing
electronic journals in a fully electronic
(SGML-encoded) format instead of as
scanned page images.

The Institute for Scientific Information
(ISI), Philadelphia, and IBM's Almaden
Research Center, San Jose, Calif., are collaborating to develop a prototype electronic library system for initial implementation by August 1995. The system
will provide users with desktop access over local area networks to bibliographic data, abstracts, and table-of-contents data from 1,350 scientific
journals contained in the Life Sciences
edition of Current Contents, an ISI publication. In addition, page images will
be accessible for journals to which the
pilot site subscribes (and for which
publishers have agreed to allow electronic delivery).

The system will have a client-server
architecture - a setup that allows users
to access it from personal computers
running most operating systems, such
as DOS (and Windows), Macintosh,
and UNIX - and a user interface based
on Lotus Notes. Pilot sites for the
project include Brookhaven National
Laboratory, Upton, N.Y.; Lehigh University, Bethlehem, Pa.; the New York
City Public Library; Purdue University,
West Lafayette, Ind.; University College, London; and Glaxo Research &
Development Ltd., Hertfordshire, England. The sites operate independently - that is, people at one site cannot access journals at other sites.

The objective of the ISI-IBM project
is to test the many variables relating
to electronic distribution of information and evaluate new technologies
for use in future digital libraries. Areas to be explored include protection
of intellectual property rights; billing,
accounting, and business management
of electronic libraries; pricing scenarios; and patterns of use of electronic
journals.

In addition to such nongovernment
efforts, a joint initiative of the National
Science Foundation, the Department of
Defense's Advanced Research Projects
Agency, and the National Aeronautics
& Space Administration is funding six
digital library research projects. The
projects are designed to advance the
technology for collecting, storing, and
organizing digital information and
making it available over networks.

One of these projects, centered at the
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, will focus on journals and magazines in the science and engineering
literature. Mosaic will provide users at
several universities with access to the
publications.

Many other scientific electronic publishing ventures exist. For example, an
electronic version of Protein Science,
published by the Protein Society, Seattle, will soon be available on World
Wide Web. According to Protein Science
electronic publishing coordinator Stephen H. White and Editor-in-Chief
Hans Neurath, "The electronic library
will, if done right, greatly simplify our
lives as working scientists. This is not
to say that the electronic journal will
entirely replace the printed journal
which, as far as we know today, will
always have a place in the distribution
and storage of scientific information."

E-print archives

Electronic publishing can be so inexpensive that some scientists and librarians are already beginning to view traditional publishers as obsolete middlemen. For example, physicists can now
transmit scientific papers directly to e-print systems - storage and distribution services that make the papers accessible to other scientists - thus bypassing publishers and the traditional
peer review process.

The father of the e-print concept is
theoretical physicist Paul H. Ginsparg of
Los Alamos National Laboratory
(LANL), founder and operator of electronic archives of nonreviewed preprints
of physics, nonlinear dynamics, mathematics, and economics papers. The archives are electronic versions of an earlier system in which printed copies of
physics preprints (papers that had already been submitted to journals) were
mailed to a list of subscribers.

The first e-print system went on-line
in August 1991, covering theoretical
high-energy physics and serving 160
users. From that modest start, e-print
archives have experienced explosive
growth and are now some of the largest and most active databases on Internet - with more than 25,000 active users worldwide and more than 45,000
electronic transactions per day.

Archives are relatively inexpensive
to set up, and no fees are charged for
use. However, publishers point out
that federal government support of the
people and computer equipment needed to operate e-print archives helps
make the systems inexpensive.

E-print archives currently cover 20
topical areas in economics, 15 physics
subdisciplines, seven areas of mathematics, five nonlinear dynamics topics,
the field of atmospheric and oceanic
sciences, and the area of computation
and linguistics. For those with access to
World Wide Web, the home page address for LANL's e-print archives is
http://xxx.lanl.gov/.

The most chemistry-oriented file in
the physics group is the chemical
physics archive, which is co-organized
by the theoretical chemistry and molecular physics group at LANL and
the department of chemistry at Brown
University.

In a recent article in Los Alamos Science,
Ginsparg explained that the e-print concept "began as an experimental means
of circumventing recognized inadequacies of research journals, but unexpectedly became within a very short period
the primary means of communicating
ongoing research information."

According to Ginsparg, e-print systems are "entirely automated - including the submission process and indexing of titles, authors, and abstracts -
and allow access via e-mail, anonymous
FTP [file transfer protocol], and World
Wide Web." The advantages are that
"the communication of research results occurs on a dramatically accelerated time scale and much of the waste
of the hard-copy distribution scheme
is eliminated. In addition, researchers
who might not ordinarily communicate with one another can quickly set
up a virtual meeting ground and ultimately disband if things do not pan
out - all with infinitely greater ease
and flexibility than is provided by current publication media."

Ginsparg writes that "members of
our community have ... learned to determine from the title and abstract (and
occasionally the authors) whether we
wish to read a paper as well as to verify results ourselves, rather than rely on
the alleged verification of overworked
or otherwise careless referees. The small
amount of filtering provided by refereed journals plays no effective role in
our research."

The point is, if electronic distribution
is so simple and peer review superfluous, who needs the traditional scientific publisher?

"What role will be played by publishing companies [in electronic research communication], and how large
will their profits be?" asks Ginsparg
rhetorically. "Can publishing companies provide more value than an unmanned automated system whose primary virtue is instant retransmission?"
In the long term, he says, "it is difficult
to imagine how the current model of
funding publishing companies through
research libraries (in turn funded by
overhead on research grants) can possibly persist."

Not so fast, says ACS's Marks: "Research isn't completed until the results
have been peer reviewed and published. An author might have a good
reputation, but many authors with
good reputations have submitted papers of questionable quality."

Ginsparg tells C&EN, "It is clear that
electronic systems can easily accommodate peer review, and undoubtedly
will. I am not opposed in the least to
the principle of peer review - I simply
object to the inept way it is currently
implemented in my discipline and
[have] argued, and moreover demonstrated,
that it is so badly handled that
we lose nothing by abandoning it. This
undoubtedly differs from field to
field."

In physics, he says, "we have a reader
community that essentially coincides
with the author community, [whereas]
in chemistry I'm told that there is a readership - in industrial labs, et cetera - that
vastly outnumbers the authoring community. Hence, some of the economic
lessons in my community may not carry
over so directly."

But at least in physics, Ginsparg
says, he would prefer that "the current onetime all-or-nothing [system],
as implemented in the print format"
be replaced by a much more flexible
system of review. He has been considering establishing an alternative form
of peer review on e-print archives, but
he can't yet say exactly what will
emerge.

Asked about prospects for a broader
extension of e-print archives in chemistry, Jim Doll of the department of
chemistry at Brown University, who
helped develop the archive in chemical
physics, says e-print system use "is
most natural at the moment in areas
where there are relatively common
standards for document preparation."
In physics (and chemical physics), the
commercial scientific word processing
program TeX is sufficiently commonplace that it offers a convenient standard, he says. "This tends not to be the
case at the moment in all areas of
chemistry."

According to Doll, "It is likely that
emerging 'portable document format'
software will soon bring these electronic
publication activities into much broader
areas of chemistry. Such software will
make documents portable across a
broad range of platforms. ... When this
software becomes a reality, the use of
electronic archives will likely expand
significantly."

Document delivery services

Libraries have traditionally provided
the largest share of subscription revenue for scientific books and journals.
But all bets are off if electronic publishing continues to gain in popularity.

For example, document delivery
services now permit librarians and library users to quickly get single copies of articles by computer downloading, fax, or mail. Hence, people can now
scan contents pages of journals and buy
scientific information by the article,
eliminating the need to subscribe to the
journals.

Document delivery services are
deeply troubling to publishers. "All we
get is a copyright clearance fee, and
journal articles that aren't accessed
don't generate any revenue," says
Marks. In effect, the existence of single-article services means that "there are a
lot of people republishing our material.
One of the things I've thought about is
withdrawing permission to copy for resale from the Copyright Clearance Center [Danvers, Mass.] and saying that
these services can't reprint and sell our
material."

On the other hand, Ginsparg contends that "many researchers in the future will refuse to sign copyright agreements that assign sole distribution
rights to the journal's publisher. In fact,
as a national lab employee, I have never been permitted to sign any copyright
agreement without attaching a disclaimer that the U.S. government retains rights to distribute in any way it
pleases."

Ginsparg adds, "Certainly researchers
and their funding institutions should
insist on sharing copyright and retaining
distribution rights to material in the format produced by authors. ... The person who has really been articulating this
for years and deserves the credit is Ann
Okerson." Okerson is director of the Office of Scientific & Academic Publishing
at the Association of Research Libraries,
Washington, D.C.

From Marks's point of view, the
problem with single-article ordering is
that "a journal publishes everything
submitted that is deemed top-quality
science, whether or not anyone ever
even reads it. In effect, an archive of
peer-reviewed research is created. Subscribers to the printed journal pay for
everything that's there, and the cost is
fairly reasonable because it's distributed among a large number of subscribers. If you have everything available
electronically and people only pay for
what they print out, we won't be able
to support this system."

Marks adds, "We have to figure out
how to make the transition from the
printed product to the electronic product. During this period, we have to
generate enough revenue from both
sources to keep the program going.
That's really the challenge of migrating
to the electronic age."